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Alvin Greene – Brought to you by the 17th Amendment

The 17th Amendment to the US Constitution allowed for direct election by the voters of their senators. Never mind that the Founding Fathers foresaw that was a bad idea – onward in our rush toward democracy! (something else the Founders knew to be a mistake)

Not only does direct election of senators lead those senators to compete in confiscating and redistributing wealth in order to buy votes, but there’s also the distinct possibility that, (Hm, how can I put this delicately?) if a significant portion of the electorate in your state is lazy, ignorant, or mentally deficient (or all the above) they might actually vote for someone like Alvin Greene, the Democrat candidate for the South Carolina senate seat who just won his primary despite not bothering to campaign for it. He spent no money, aside from the $10,000 filing fee, and how he came up with that is a mystery, since he’s unemployed. He rang no doorbells, spoke at no rallies, and gave no interviews, but he won 60% of the vote. He is inarticulate. He can express no plan beyond “Jobs, Education, and Justice,” and he is being charged with having shown obscene material to a minor. His responses to questions are so lame, so monosyllabic, that in a recent interview, his interviewer asked him if he was impaired. Really. Most candidates realize you have to survive your general election, not just the primary before you start acting like an idiot. At least we can credit Mr. Greene with being transparent.

Except aside from clearly demonstrating his sub-par intelligence, he’s not transparent at all. “My lawyer’s handling that,” is how he answers most of the questions in this interview.

So how does an unemployed, inarticulate, potential criminal who ran no campaign, displays no mental acuity, and must periocially be poked with a stick in order to ensure he’s still alive win a primary election? When the mob votes, you get candidates that are just like them. South Carolina – you have serious issues.

When you elected James Clyburn back in the early ’90s and, in his first letter to his constituents he used words like “spanse” (as in “the broad spanse and diversity of our state”) and “syncretize” (as in “we must syncretize the needs of different people”) I thought you’d been shamed enough, and might exercise a little more discernment in your representatives. You keep on reelecting that clown though, so I guess Alvin Greene should come as no surprise to anyone.

If you, like many of my friends, live in South Carolina, I hope you homeschool your kids. It’s clear that the state is doing a lousy job of turning out responsible citizens.